Sarasota and Bradenton lead nation in gun-suicide deaths, report shows
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Sarasota and Bradenton lead the nation in gun-suicide deaths among cities with a population over 50,000, according to a report from New York University.
The report was released in September as part of a suicide prevention awareness month. Researchers examined gun homicide data from cities with populations over 50,000 from 2014 to 2020, finding nearly four out of 10 gun-related deaths in U.S. cities are attributed to suicide, an 11% increase since 2014, according to the report.
Bradenton was listed as having the highest rate of gun suicides of all cities with available data in 2020 with 34.5 suicides per 100,000 people. Sarasota was ranked in the top five cities with the highest rates for 2020 with 7.3 suicides per 100,000 of the population.
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“To address gun violence in our cities, we need to acknowledge the growing — and too often unspoken— role that gun suicide plays in the human toll of this epidemic,” Meg O’Toole, deputy director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a press release. “This analysis unveils the scope of people who die by suicide and highlights the need to broaden the concept of city gun violence to recognize, prevent, and solve this pressing public health concern.”
The report also found:
Cities with the strongest gun violence prevention laws have about half the rate of gun suicides as those with the weakest laws.
Cities with the most gun shops experience four times higher suicide rates than those with the fewest.
Cities with the most parks or walkable neighborhoods have half the rate of gun suicides as those with the fewest.
Smaller cities experience higher gun suicide rates.
Carol Rescigno, president of Sarasota’s chapter of Brady, a gun violence awareness organization, said suicide is often an impulse, but it’s a more lethal impulse with a gun since there’s really no going back.
Rescigno said the group has focused on an initiative in Sarasota called End Family Fire to decrease the number of shooting deaths due to improperly stored or misused guns in homes. They’ve worked with different groups, left flyers at gun stores, had billboards put up, and sent out letters to raise awareness during the summer of 2020.
“Sometimes you feel like you're beating your head against the wall, and sometimes you feel like things are happening,” Rescigno said. “We just stay with it. I think someday there will be better gun laws.”
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Lax gun laws make suicide easy, Rescigno said. The Brady group has worked to push for a law that would require better background checks. Rescigno said since Florida is a conservative state, Brady is hoping to work with groups from more conservative backgrounds and get them to start talking about proper gun storage to prevent gun-suicide deaths.
Rescigno also said another important legislation that should be considered is red flag laws that would allow someone’s guns to be taken away if they’re thought to be a threat to themselves or others.
Patricia Brigham, president of Prevent Gun Violence Florida, said there's looming legislation that can set back efforts to curb gun suicides in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis promised in April that "before I am done as governor, we will have a signature on" what supporters call a "constitutional carry" bill that would allow residents to carry concealed guns without needing licenses.
Bypassing the process of purchasing a gun that includes background checks, thumbprints and critical training sessions that are required when applying for a permit could be dangerous, Brigham said.
"We already are seeing gun violence, just permeating the lives of Americans daily with different types of shootings," Brigham said. "The very last thing we need in Florida is more easy access."
Easier access to guns can also lead to higher gun-suicide rates, Brigham said.
"If an actively suicidal person has a gun in the home, boy those chances of suicide go up," Brigham said. "And if that gun is lying around unlocked, it is not going to be hard for an impulsive, suicidal act to happen."
The Bradenton Police Department declined to comment on the data from the report. The Sarasota Police Department also declined to comment since the data didn’t reflect the numbers of the department.
Rebecca Ofrane, manager of engagements and partnerships for the City Health Dashboard, said the data is sourced from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics death records, and each year of data is a five-year pooled estimate, the estimate of a year and the previous four years of data. She said the report was city-level, not county-level.
“City Dashboard data may be slightly different from what is reflected in police department data because of different methods of calculation,” Ofrane said in an email. “Sometimes, data also differs due to place of occurrence of death versus place of residence. The vital statistics records that Dashboard data is derived from uses place of residence.”
There are 906 cities on the City Health Dashboard, but not all have firearm data available, Ofrane said. For the 2020 firearm homicide and firearm suicide measures, 461 cities have homicide data, and 649 cities have suicide data. The year 2020 has the most number of cities with data available since rates were highest across the board in 2020.
The increase reflects years of easing restrictions on gun ownership and on carrying firearms in public, and of a sharp spike in gun sales during the first year of the pandemic, authors of the report said in the press release.
Makiko Felice from the Mom’s Demand Action Manatee County chapter said the report is not entirely shocking given the gun culture in the area.
Felice said it’s important not to stigmatize mental illness, but if someone has a pattern of abusive behavior toward others or themselves, they should not have access to guns.
It’s a good start to have risk protection orders in Florida, but it’s important to continue to work toward minimizing gun-suicide deaths, she said.
“We try to honor these victims and their families by trying to find solutions," she said.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota, Bradenton lead U.S. in gun-suicide deaths, report shows
